Encounter Journal Preview, MMO Report, Comics

Road to Patch 4.2 - Encounter Journal
The release date of Patch 4.2 is getting close and I will recap its major features throughout the week to end up with a nice and complete guide to Patch 4.2 for the release, hopefully on June 28th. Let's start with the highly anticipated Encounter Journal!

Encounter Journal
The Encounter Journal is an in-game encylopedia listing everything you need to know on instances and raid bosses. Assuming people start using it regularly, it will probably fix a lot of issues people had in pick up groups where people were just too afraid to ask what a boss does and would rather die than look stupid and get kicked.

The encounter journal can be accessed from the bottom menu bar or by hitting CTRL + Shift + J on your keyboard.

You will then access the instance selection menu with a "Dungeons" and "Raids" tabs, allowing you to get details on any raid or dungeon encounter introduced in Cataclysm (including the Firelands raid)

Cataclysm Raids Tab

Firelands Raid Boss Selection

Encounter Journal - Boss Loot Lists
The encounter journal includes a list of items dropped by each boss with a couple of extra features:

The list can be filtered for 10 and 25-Man encounters. It doesn't really change anything these days but it will probably be useful if an item is only available in 25-Man at some point, or when older raids are supported.

The "Heroic Mode" filter is also available in the loot list and will display loot from the Heroic version.

A filter by class, to easily get a list of the gear relevant to your class only. (The Druid filter automatically lists all the items in the instance)

You can also list the loot from all the bosses in the instance by clicking the Chest icon when at the Boss selection screen.

Boss Loot Table

Class Filter

Paladin Loot!

Instance Loot Table

Boss Information and Abilities
The main objective of the Encounter Journal is to give you all the information you need to engage a boss without being clueless about what's going to happen to you and your raid. The journal provides you with:

A description of all the abilities used by the boss.

A description of all abilities used by NPC adds that might spawn during the encounter. (Hostile and Friendly)

The evolution of the fight over multiple stages.

A general idea of how mechanics work.

An "heroic only" filter to display abilities and variations of the fight only happening in Heroic Mode.

You might also notice a couple of icons icons next to some of the spells. Those are alerts used to bring your attention to important point of the fights, 12 Alerts are available in the current version of the Encounter Journal:

For example, this is the journal entry for Beth'tilac, one of the boss of the Firelands raid instance.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Beth'tilac
Matriarch of the Cinderweb Brood, Beth'tilac and her merciless offspring sate their appetites by sucking the magma and fire from the corpses of elementals. To provide her broodlings with added sustenance, Beth'tilac has woven a network of incendiary webs throughout her lair to trap unsuspecting prey.

Stage One: The Cinderweb
Beth'tilac retreats to the top of her web at the beginning of the encounter.

Fire Energy
Beth'tilac slowly loses Fire Energy over time. Cinderweb Drones also siphon some of her energy when their own energy is depleted. Whenever Beth'tilac runs out of Fire Energy, she will set herself ablaze, causing Smoldering Devastation.

Smoldering Devastation - When Beth'tilac's Fire Energy fully depletes, she will set herself ablaze and inflict 380000 Fire damage on all players located at her same level.

Cinderweb Spinner
Cinderweb Spinners dangle from the web above on a filament strand. Using Taunt or a similar ability on a Spinner will cause them to drop to the ground. Once killed, their web filament remains. Players may then interact with the filament and move to the top of the web.

Seeping Venom - The Cinderweb Spiderling leaps onto a random player within 5 yards, injecting them with venom and inflicting 6936 Fire damage every 2 seconds for 10 sec.

Cinderweb Broodling
These unstable spiders fixate on a random player and cast Volatile Burst when they reach their target.

Volatile Burst - Cinderweb Broodlings explode when they reach a player, inflicting 41624 Fire damage to all enemies within yards.

Stage Two: The Frenzy!
After she has performed Smoldering Devastation three times, Beth'tilac enters a frenzy. She lowers herself from the safety of the top of her Cinderweb and no longer calls for aid from her brood.

The Widow's Kiss - Beth'tilac's deadly kiss boils the blood of her current target, reducing the healing dealt to the target by % every 2 seconds for 20 sec. The kiss also causes the target to inflict increasing Fire damage to their surrounding allies within 10 yards.

Ember Flare - Beth'tilac emits a blazing heat, inflicting 18500 Fire damage to enemies on the same level as Beth'tilac.

I think it's a great thing, we had DBM and we had guides to fight bosses on other sites, blizzard doing this is pretty cool, we have all the info we could've got somewhere else right in our own game. if you want the game harder, run it with no addons :P

It is very detailed Only problem I found with it was it doesn't (or wouldn't) let me see any bosses previous to Catalclsym level, which I think is a problem as if they did it for all dungeons and raids then people could get used to using it as they level up, rather than hitting level 80, seeing this shiny new button and thinking "meh, ive used wowhead up to here" or "meh i'll just ask other people for tacts like always" etc =/

On the one hand I don't see the problem with them providing a list of tactics a boss uses during an encounter, but on the other hand I wonder if the development time would have been better spent giving us another 5-man in 4.2 or any other additional content.

I don't see the in-game journal replacing any addons. Raiders will still use DBM for the alerts. People will still use AtlasLoot because it not only contains dungeon and raid loot, but also profession loot, faction loot, and so forth. Not to mention AtlasLoot has the ability to set up wish lists to track which loot you are needing and from where it is obtained.

The in-game journal will be nice for some casual puggers, but to be frank I wonder how many of those people will even bother to look at the journal and still ask in party or raid chat (or just stay silent and fumble through anyways). I am a very casual raider these days and I still read up on boss fights, and I am sure there are lot of other casual players that read up on strats and it doesn't take much time or effort to do so. Also, after you have seen the encounter a couple times then the in-game journal becomes moot for that encounter. Not to mention people may still check websites to see what strategies other guilds have used to down the encounter.

Again, I don't see it as a bad addition, but content-wise 4.2 looks rather dearth.

It is very detailed Only problem I found with it was it doesn't (or wouldn't) let me see any bosses previous to Catalclsym level, which I think is a problem as if they did it for all dungeons and raids then people could get used to using it as they level up, rather than hitting level 80, seeing this shiny new button and thinking "meh, ive used wowhead up to here" or "meh i'll just ask other people for tacts like always" etc =/

about the journal... very sad that in this thread are no blue posts: World of Warcraft -> Forums -> Development -> Public Test Realm -> Dungeon Journal and competitive raiding (page 11 eu.battle.net forum) although there are a lot of constructive criticism